Alex Cross’s Trial

I used my handkerchief to wipe off the blood. “And what is it I have failed to learn, Moody?”

“You can go around trying to fight every white man in Mississippi that hates colored people,” she said, “but it won’t do any good. There’s a lot more of them than there is of you. You can’t protect us. Nobody can do that. Not even God.”

She turned to walk away, but then she looked back. “But thank you for trying,” she said.

Chapter 61

IN FOUR WEEKS OF LIVING at Maybelle’s, I’d come to realize that my room was so damp, so airless, so overheated night and day, that nothing ever really dried out.

My clothes, my hand towel, and my shave towel were always damp. My hair was moist at all times. As much as I toweled off, powdered with talc, and blotted with witch hazel, my shirts and underclothes always retained a film of moisture. This stifling closet at the top of Maybelle’s stairs was a punishment, a torture, a prison.

And besides, there was so much to keep me awake at night.

I longed for a letter from home.

And maybe because I didn’t hear, I wrestled with thoughts of Elizabeth. I could still feel our kiss in front of her house.

I wondered if Roosevelt had ever gotten my wire. Surely he would have sent some answer by now. What if that telegraph operator in McComb had taken exception to the facts as I was reporting them?

And here I was, quite a sight, if anyone happened in to see me. I lay crosswise on the iron bed, naked, atop sweat-moistened sheets. I had tied a wet rag around my head; every half hour or so, I refreshed it with cool water from the washbasin.

But no one could win the battle against a Mississippi summer. Your only hope was to lie low and move as little as possible.

“Mr. Corbett.”

At first I thought the voice came from the landing, but no, it came from outside.

Beneath my window.

“Mr. Corbett.”

A stage whisper drifting up from three stories below.

I swung my legs to the floor, wrapped the top sheet around myself, and walked over to the window. I couldn’t make out anyone in the mottled shadows under Maybelle’s big eudora tree.

I called softly, “Who’s out there? What do you want?”

“They sent me to get you,” the voice said.

“Who sent you?”

“Moody Cross,” he said. “Can you come?”

I didn’t think it was a trap, but it paid to be careful. “What for? What does Moody want?”

“You got to come, Mr. Corbett.” The fear in the voice was unmistakable. “They been another lynchin’.”

“Oh God-where?”

“Out by the Quarters.”

“Who is it?”

“Hiram,” the man said. “Hiram Cross. Moody’s brother is dead.”

Chapter 62

I FELT A DEEP SURGE of pain in my chest, a contraction so sharp that for a moment I wondered if I was having a coronary. Almost instantly I was covered with clammy sweat.

I heard the voice from outside again.

“Somebody overheard Hiram say that one day white folk would work for the black,” the man whispered hoarsely. “Now Hiram swinging dead from a tree.”

I felt the room beginning to turn-no, that was just my head spinning. I felt a strange chill, and a powerful force rising within me.

“Stand back,” I said loudly.

“What’s that, Mr. Corbett?”

“I said stand back. Get out from under this window!”

I heard branches strain and creak as the man obeyed.

Then I leaned my head out the window and threw up my supper.

Chapter 63

MOODY DID NOT SHED a tear at her brother’s funeral. Her face was an impassive sculpture carved from the smoothest brown marble.

Abraham fought to stay strong, to stand and set a brave example for all the people watching him now. And although he managed to control his expression, he could do nothing about the tears spilling down his face.

Swing low, sweet chariot.
Coming for to carry me home.

It must have been the hottest place on earth, that little sanctuary with one door in back and one door in front and no windows at all. It was the Mt. Zion A.M.E. Full Gospel church, three miles out of town on the Muddy Springs Road, and it was jammed to overflowing with friends and relatives.

Early in the service, a woman fainted and crashed hard to the floor. Her family gathered around her to fan her and lift her up. A baby screamed bloody murder in the back. Half the people in the room were weeping out loud.

But Moody did not cry.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
Glory hallelujah!

“I knew Hiram from the day he was born!” cried the preacher. “I loved him like a father loves his son!”

“Yes, you did!” shouted an old lady in the front row.

“Tell it, brother!”

“Amen!”

“I carried the baby Hiram to the river,” the preacher went on, “and I dipped him in the river of life. That’s right, I held him under the water of Jesus until he was baptized, and he come up sputtering, and then he was lifted up in the Holy Spirit and the everlasting light of Jesus-”

“That’s right, Rev!”